Boy performs dangerous stunt on Indian railway

Indian rail officials have called for a clamp-down on a train-jumping craze on
Mumbai’s overcrowded lines after a video of the death-defying stunts went
viral.

Dean Nelson in New Delhi

2:50PM BST 31 Aug 2011

The video, which has spread through YouTube, shows two young men skidding along a station platform while hanging on to the handrail of a moving train. As the train leaves the station, they jump up on to a ledge, and then leap out to slap each passing pylon. It also shows them jumping on top of a steel viaduct and running on it while hanging on to the train before jumping back on again.

Audiences have reacted with disbelief at the stunt, which appears to be staged to impress travelers in the trains’ ‘lady carriages’ between Mumbai’s Cotton Green and Reay Road stations.

Officials have pleaded with the ‘stuntmen’ to stop before someone slips under a train and is maimed or killed. A spokesman for Central Railways said the stuntman featured in the video had “risked his life for a few seconds of fame.” His colleague at Western Railways called the stunt “a dangerous and insane act of rashness which nobody should replicate.”

The stunt takes to new levels of risk the Mumbai tradition of fare-dodging passengers sitting on the train roof. Though illegal – those caught “traveling dangerously” can be fined 500 Rupees, around seven pounds, or jailed for three months.

Commuter champions have also criticised the craze and called on passengers to pull the chord to stop the train when they see the stuntmen at play.